Anthropomorphic 

Furry Deer 

Character Portrait

Johann Underbelly

The curious logic which, up until recently, had governed Anthroxville since its ill-advised inception, was that of universal and unflinching intolerance. Many look back with fond nostalgia at those tongue-lashing days of yore, when, so long as each and every demented windbag pulled their weight and expressed their prejudices, a balance of bigotry could be maintained which ensured a kind of spontaneous order throughout Anthroxville. With every participant in society sure of their own truths and incredulous with the nonsense of others, a curious equilibrium of stability arose, underpinned by the common understanding of the destructive threat posed by the ever-pervasive, Mutually Assured Discrimination (MAD) — should any individual or group start getting a bit carried away and begin thinking about taking things to the next level against their ideological foes. This omnipresent undercurrent of MAD served as an effective deterrent to keep intolerance tethered to a leash; full of beans and bark but essentially defanged by the neutering interests of self-preservation. What went around was guaranteed to boomerang back with compound interest; so while gleefully eviscerating one's contemporaries in a rabid frenzy was de rigueur, one remained mindful to keep things strictly cerebral: all sound and fury, but crucially, no actual bloodletting. Pitting wits, not blood and guts, against one another. 

This cultural level-playing field of intolerance allowed all opinions, ideas, and beliefs – no matter how farcical – to roam free-reign in the pacifying pastures of public discourse; rather than fester and mutate deep within the radicalizing catacombs of involuntary censorship. Dispute, as it proved, is always the best disinfectant, and a generous dose of criticism, mockery, and derision not only dropkicked the crackpottery back to the realm of gibbering lunacy from whence it came, but also, through some perverse alchemy, allows the figments of half-decent thoughts to form through the collision of discourse and debate.

However, this system of dunk and be dunked which had served Anthroxville so well was covertly commandeered by a mewling cadre of guilt-trippers and upended into the mess of infinite lunacy Anthroxville finds itself in today. To date, nobody knows from where they oozed; or who in fact invited them to the party – not least, the anthropomorphic furry deer, Johann Underbelly, however, ooze they did, and they took it upon themselves to put Anthroxville on the ruinous road of no return. In their warped fever-dream view of the world, the soapbox shouting match of Anthroxville’s intolerant way of life was, well, intolerable. They were strangely transfixed about the feelings of the individual and their particular clique, and sought to muzzle the invigorating exchange of ideas with the stifling damp squib of axiomatic sensitivity and conformity.

Words, as they saw it, should have consequences, and in a stroke of genius, they hatched a plan to weaponize the seductive concept of offense and harness its radioactive self-serving appeal to hijack the status quo; gaslighting it into an illogical labyrinth of trapdoors and tripwires made up of double-standards, cognitive whammies, and moral panics. To the most offended went the spoils, and as though in a delirium of irony, a tyranny of tolerance began to take hold; made all the worse for the sinister delusion that it was exercised for the good of its victims. It worked a charm, and before long, the notion of blasphemy made its ill-fated return, and the stabilizing de-facto MAD underpinnings was transformed into the vertiginous tightrope of caprice that was Selectively Assured Discrimination (SAD). This brings us up to Johann Underbelly and what became known as the Underbelly Fiasco; which has come to symbolize society’s spasmodic descent into the clutches of cataleptic insanity.

As a life-long astrophysicist, Johann Underbelly was a devout empiricist. Like his contemporaries, the furry deer approached every theory (especially his own) with rabid evidence-based rigor. During the previous regime of intolerance, astrophysicists were hailed as being among the most formidable combatants in the coliseum of ideas; with even their most hard-nosed detractors conceding the methodical prowess with which they calmly debunked their way through the hailstorm of opposing opinions. However, the fellowship of astrophysicists found themselves at odds with the grave new world of tolerance, with their commitment to veracity flying counter to the sensitivities and falsehoods of belief, hunch, and superstition; which, as misfortune would have it, were the mainstays of a recently emboldened individual, who was about to ignite the tinderbox of mass hysteria and outrage throughout Anthroxville.

One morning, a newly hired janitor was sniffing around Anthroxville's University, where Johann taught, when he encountered a miniature earth globe which sat atop the furry deer’s desk and let out a eunuchoid yelp. Johann, who was busy nosing through a journal of quantum mechanics, briefly looked up at this jittering specimen with a hoisted brow, and their eyes locked momentarily. Assuming the strange wacko just suffered from bulging exophthalmos of the eyes – which had seemingly become increasingly common of late – Johann thought nothing of it and returned to his book. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe the dozen or more choreatic yelps which followed their short silent exchange; or the curious way in which the janitor had called him a “Pagan cockflap” several times in quick succession should have perhaps merited further inquiry from Johann. However, he decided to give this oddity of a man the benefit of the doubt, and kept his attention fixed on the scattershot of equations on the pages before him, and calmly cracked open a can of Skedaddle Soda. When he did eventually cast his gaze up once more, the unusual obtruder had gone, leaving behind his mop, bucket, and what was seemingly some kind of wrinkled homemade business card, reading: Flat: 1569, pinned to the wall.

All in, the furry deer spent less than a second (e^(iπ)+1, to be precise) reflecting on the peculiar interaction and went on about with his day, not even bothering to remove the crinkled gloss-coated card impaled to his wall, which offered no further information such as a street name, zip code or even a phone number. Had he spent a little longer marinating on the matter, he may have twigged that this was not so much a solicitation as it was a proclamation. Flat: 1569.

The furry deer turned to his window, trying to make sense of the absurd call. Swirling up high in the sky was the iridescent bulbous glint of a helicopter – most likely tailing Anthroxville’s infamous petrolhead paladin, Kingsley Throttle, and his iconic gas-guzzling rust-bucket, in what Johann presumed would be the latest installment in the ongoing police chase saga. He smirked as he made a mental note to check out the highlights later on the evening news, and see if Kingsley could pull off the impossible and top his multi-car pile-up record of 46, set the previous week, which had even sucked in Johann's ex-wife, Gloria Widdershins and his neighbors, Hercule von Hooter and Rupert Taboo. The slow-motion replays alone would be well worth tuning in for. However, as Johann observed, the helicopter's trajectory shifted unexpectedly. It began descending in an inverted parabola, swooping down until it hovered mere meters above the university grounds, a sight that instantly piqued his interest and mild concern.

After a moment of pondering the possible reasoning behind this maneuver (had Kingsley taken a detour through campus?), Johann's attention was turned to a rabble of colleagues from his faculty who were yomping past his ground-level office, agitated in speculation over the conundrum of quite why there is more matter than antimatter in the observable universe. Swinging open the window and cupping both hands to his mouth, Johann called out: “Asymmetry in neutrino-antineutrino oscillations!” The group stopped with a collective grin, pleased to have suckered in another pedagogue to the lunchtime debate. “Ah Johann…” began one of the dons, raising his finger in convivial disagreement, “But is not the charge-conjugation and parity-reversal violation exhibited in quarks much too small to support this elementary explanation?”

As this recently tenured professor made his sassy rebuttal, Johann noticed in the periphery of his vision what appeared to be a humdinger of a steamroller, violently jolting back and forth like a bucking bronco, as its driver was trying his best to desperately bring this industrial beast under control. He returned his attention to the huddle of tweed-jacketed wonks. “Quarks perhaps, but you should know better than anyone that the violation in leptons, however, could generate this matter-antimatter disparity by way of leptogenesis,” he said, mimicking the lofty finger raise of his contemporary. He paused, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Hold on,” he continued, “I’ve got something to help groove that smooth brain of yours,” he jibed with affection, and turned to dig out a book from his office. 

He listened in on the spirited deliberations as he bounded to the far side of his office, wincing to himself as he heard the theory of electric dipole moments rearing its half-baked head. Whilst waltzing his finger across the expansive bookshelf in search of the desired worn-out spine, his phone rang again. Snatching it out from his pocket, he decided against answering this time and made a show of switching it off and tossing it aside. With the sought-after hardback seeming to elude him, he took a knee in genuflection to commit himself to the next shelf down, continuing as he had before in skimming the leather-bound ribbed collection and intoning the titles, as his finger danced past in piety. Just as he finally landed on what he had been seeking: Quantum Mechanics for Halfwits, his phone suddenly resurrected with a dizzying screech, causing him to jerk upwards and clownishly clonk his head on the row of shelving above, sending a grand, world-weary atlas tumbling down to the floor with an imperial thud.

Reeling from this moment of slapstick buffoonery, Johann staggered back and picked up the phone. “This better be good...” he growled, nursing his head with his spare hand. The familiar chugging rattle was still present, but the furry deer was able to make out every word. “You have the whole world at your feet, pagan, we all do.” Without missing a beat, Johann retorted: “Yeah, well I’ve got your mom's knees at my feet, how about that?” and hung up and lobbed his phone across the room. As he momentarily pondered how he would have improved upon his riposte given the opportunity, he cringed and looked down at the atlas, which had landed splayed open.

Bending over to pick it up and return it to its place, he was drawn to an ornamental cartouche which occupied the lower west side of the detailed bilateral map that spread across both pages. Written in faint calligraphic script within was an addendum which read:

After his previous success, Gerardus Mercator set about to create what was to be his magnum opus. This epic world map would be unmatched in its detail and accuracy, which in the age of exploration proved invaluable in helping sailors navigate around the globe, as they could use the latitude and longitude lines to plot their far-flung voyages. Completed in 1569, the long-awaited Mercator projection laid out the globe as a flattened version of a cylinder...

A spark of realization ignited in Johann's eyes as they darted from the text to the puckered card on his wall—Flat: 1569—then to his desktop globe, before returning to the page. His expression morphed into a disbelieving grin as he read aloud, "Completed in 1569... as a flattened version of a cylinder." In what started as a sharp snort and detonated into a near seizure, Johann fell into a fit of bawling laughter. Half-blinded by tears, he howled out a wheezing cackle and turned to his colleagues to share this rip-roaring revelation.

However, at that moment in time, his colleagues were preoccupied with a more pressing revelation of rip-roaring proportions: the 18-foot high, 25-tonne steamrolling juggernaut barreling towards them. The massive machine's biblically sized drum bore down on the academics, immediately splatting them under the sheer weight of the thing. They could have, should have, and in fact, did see it coming, but did nothing; just seemingly accepting their fate as par for the course. Sat atop was not some drunk construction worker – as Johann had thought when its jerking rodeo heaves caught his attention in the distant corner of his view minutes earlier – but rather the psychotic screwball janitor, whose eyes bulged just like they had when they first set upon the globe in his office that morning, as he once again barracked the pagan cockflap slur which Johann had become so acquainted with. 

Paralyzed by shock, the furry deer watched on as the don’s raised finger and hand was all that visibly remained of the party; protruding out like a twitching dorsal fin from the cresting metallic drum, before being swallowed up and disappearing from view. The helicopter Johann had scouted earlier was almost at eye-level, sending flurrying ripples of gust across the grounds as the news crew onboard captured the footage of the unfolding chaos for the folks watching at home. Johann's fleeting question of how they'd anticipated this carnage was quickly overshadowed by the more pressing concern of the steamroller's relentless advance. The monstrous machine lurched forward on its destructive warpath, crashing through Johann's office wall with brutal indifference. 

Not fancying his chances in a head-to-head tussle with the steamroller, Johann made the executive decision to postpone his date with destiny—opting rather to take to his heels and skedaddle out of the room with immediate effect. As he scrambled down the seemingly never-ending corridor, a number of bewildered heads poked out of their respective doors, trying to see what all the commotion was about. Gasping for air, he finally approached the corner leading to the exit and glanced over his shoulder, catching sight of the thundering dust cloud of debris as the steamroller plowed through the plaster wall of what was once Archie Bot's office, at the far end of the corridor.

As he bolted out of the campus, he noticed circling up above him was the helicopter once more, which had now been accompanied by several others from rival networks, and they followed him in tandem as he scampered down the deserted street. Hammering at his ribcage like a hydraulic piston, his heart was nearing nuclear detonation; while his lungs writhed in choking insubordination. Having put enough distance between himself and the 25-tonne hound of hell, Johann took the opportunity to take a breather and keeled over into a spasmodic retching fit. He sucked in another gobful of oxygen and rose to his feet, resting up against a shop window, behind which was a bank of TV sets, all tuned into the news. 

The majority of the screens on display were broadcasting what took the furry deer a couple of seconds to realize was the birds-eye footage of him looking at himself through the shop window and scratching his head with incredulity. Emblazoned across the bottom of each screen was the same flashing headline: FLATWA. What was this muppetry? The screens showed him turn and squint gormlessly up at the helicopters before returning his gaze to the shop window. The segment switched to news anchor, Felix Finicky-Snout, and his show, The Sniff Test, as photos flickered behind him showing six different photos of Johann, his place of work, home, car, and even the eatery he most regularly visited, Edison Upskirt's Upskirt Nosher. The subtitles read:

"...Along with astrophysicists, reports are coming in of meteorologists, geographers, and even air traffic controllers being targeted. Although the threat posed to them is currently unknown, topographers have also been advised to seek shelter and keep a low profile until further notice...."

On the bottom left side of the display, one screen had the demented windbag, Calvin Donnybrook, being interviewed in which he gave his full-throated support for the flatwa and celebrated the attack:

“While just a humble janitor by trade, Pat O'Plateau is a devout cartographer of the wondrous Mercator denomination. So I ask the question, what exactly did this Underbelly infidel expect? As a practicing flat-earther myself, of the Hobo-Dyer sect, nothing would bring me more joy than to see this globalist elite turned into a schnitzel, earth-willing.” 

Rather than offer even a nugget of a rebuttal, Felix seemed to agree with his interviewee, egging him on with a toady confection of sympathetic nods before proceeding to admonish Johann’s bigotry and extolling the virtues of tolerance, "You'd think in the current year..." As the interview continued, footage showed a small gathering of demonstrators, who had turned out in his support with t-shirts and banners reading: Je suis Underbelly, get promptly smooshed beyond recognition by what seemed like an armada of freewheeling steamrollers. The furry deer decided he’d seen enough when a pixelated image of a globe flickered onto the screen, and he shrunk away from the window and after checking the coast was clear, made his way over to a nearby phone box to call into the network.

Clenching the payphone with a tourniquet grip, Johann gritted his teeth as he heard Felix address the audience down the other end of the receiver: “We actually have Johann Underbelly himself on the line right now, welcome to The Sniff Test, Johann.” He took a long exasperated inhale as the tension built. “Hello Pisspants, great to be here.” There was a pause. “Johann, if you're not careful, I'll come and flatten you myself...now let's try again, shall we?" came Felix's stiff reply. Johann snarled. “Gutless bedwetters, the lot of you,” he expatiated, “and as for your cretin of a guest…” but was cut off by Felix before he could share his thoughts on Calvin. "I'm giving you a pass because I know you must be rather discombobulated by today's events, but let's stay on..." “Discombobulated? Johann interupted. "Six of my colleagues were just pancaked this afternoon, along with god knows how many others. We have steamrollers crawling all over Anthroxville and you think I’m a little discombobulated?” He hesitated. "You... pustulent... piss... stain..." he sputtered, each syllable a desperate grasp at wit. As the pitiful insult hung in the air like week-old fish, Johann felt his stomach lurch.

Thankfully, Felix was nearly as embarrassed as Johann was, and quickly pressed on: “Right...erm... so while most folk do not agree with the pancakings…” Calvin swiftly interjected to make it abundantly clear, in case it wasn’t already so, that he did in fact endorse them, along with many others, including moderate and pacifist flat-earthers. “Noted,” continued Felix, “but while the majority of the Anthroxville at large likely does not support them in their full extent, one can’t just flip off an entire belief system like that and not expect any consequences. It’s deeply offensive, Johann. You must surely accept some of the responsibility here?” He looked at the phone and pulled a face similar to the one he had made when passing a fist-sized kidney stone two weeks prior. "What? Why should I?” he scoffed, gathering himself as he returned the phone to his ear. “Because it’s insulting. Will you at the very least offer an apology?” came the response. “Will anybody apologize to me?” Johann retorted, pulling the same gurnsome expression as moments before. “Or my friends?” There was a rapt little pause as this was considered in the studio, followed by a snort of laughter. “I take that as a no,” he continued, bridling with indignation. “Political correctness gone frickin’ mad,” he spluttered. “No, let me just correct you just there, Johann, it’s political correctness gone SAD,” replied Felix as Johann slammed down the phone and drove his head through the glass window.

In what appeared to be a unanimous agreement of not wishing to be steamrolled, all newspapers, publications, and media outlets caved in to the intimidation of the flatwa and sought the route of appeasement by collectively agreeing to update the industry editorial style guide and emit the letter ‘o’ and the number zero from all of their pages with immediate effect. They were to be henceforth replaced with a hyphen (-) in place of all ‘o’s, and an en dash (–) to replace all zeros, so as to accommodate the sensitivities of the flat-earthers. Well Magazine was the last of the signatories, with owner, Spencer Godwottery, weighing up whether the looming threat of a steamrolling might in fact be exactly what was needed to motivate his employees and improve the weekly rag’s prospects.

To the untrained eye, this new policy rendered whole sentences almost indecipherable, such as the following example, which Johann came across while hiding out in a safe house some weeks after the flatwa was first declared:

P-lice have t-day c-nfirmed that l-cal h--dlum, Vict-r Wall-p, is h-lding -ver 2– pe-ple h-stage at gunp-int in an apparent p-st -ffice r-bbery. The situati-n is still -ng-ing and rep-rts are that he will sh--t -ne victim every 1– mintues until his -utrage-us demands -f -ver $6–,75–,–––,––– al-ng with an escape helic-pter are met...

Strangely, in the case of Well Magazine, this new editorial practice had the effect of making its content more readable than ever before, but still did little to improve sales. 

The squeakiest and most violent of wheels got their grease and with the new normal having set in, the world had moved on and an atmospheric indifference cloaked the ether of the collective consciousness. Flatwas and steamrollings now served as an ambient backdrop of everyday life—a function of a society striving to tolerate ever more, lest it be deemed intolerant. The Underbelly Fiasco became a footnote in the annals of Anthroxville history, superseded by fresh, more pressing controversies; each briefly occupying the limelight of public indignation before too being supplanted by the latest installment of outrage on the infinite treadmill of moral hysteria.